


It's the third year of war

by Undercore



Category: Star Wars: The Clone Wars (2008) - All Media Types
Genre: Force Suppression (Star Wars), Force Visions, Gen, Grief, Obi-wan just has an awful time, Obi-wan's connection to the Force is painful and traumatic, That isn't how the force works, War, War is miserable, brief mention of anakin
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-05
Updated: 2020-11-05
Packaged: 2021-03-09 00:41:22
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 868
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27395884
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Undercore/pseuds/Undercore
Summary: He stared at his reflection and the General stared back, those hollow, blank eyes replaced with his own terrified grey-blue.
Comments: 5
Kudos: 71





	It's the third year of war

_They buried him quietly—everybody’s busy._

_Who did he fight for? I asked. We don’t know, they say._

_He fought for someone, they say, but who—who knows?_

_Will it change anything, they say, what’s the point now?_

_\- 'They buried their son last winter' by Serhiy Zhadan_

He’d seen the General in his dreams ever since he was a child.

It was awful before he was brought to the temple, his mother told him, clutching his gloved hand, the one time he’d seen her during the war. 

“You would wake up every night screaming and crying, we couldn’t get you to calm down until the sun rose. We didn’t know what was wrong, we couldn’t understand, you couldn’t explain it to us.” 

She’d shaken her head, patting his hand mournfully. “ Even when you found the words, later, we still couldn’t understand. Not until you were Found, not until…”

She’d given him a look, so filled with grief and sorrow, he’d had to look away, pulling his hand out of hers.

He did not see his family again, did not have the time to visit, was too busy. That is what he told himself.

He remembered laying awake in his bedroom a few weeks after becoming Qui-gon’s padawan, terrified to fall asleep. Terrified to leave the Temple again. Terrified of the screaming whispers that promised endless suffering.

He’d rarely left the Temple growing up, could count the times he’d done so on one hand.

Whenever he did, his dreams would turn morbid. Filled with blood, death, war. 

Whenever he did, the General would visit him.

He was given a bracelet after he’d collapsed on the steps outside of the temple. 

“To help with your visions,” the elderly healer had told him, his eyes heavy, face pinched as he attached the metal cuff.

It hummed, louder than the Force and suddenly the world fell silent. He could still hear, but the whispers had stopped.

Obi-wan hated those eyes. They were the same eyes Yoda had worn when comforting him as a youngling. They were the same eyes his mother had worn, bidding him good-bye for the last time.

He continued to wear the bracelet. He had no choice if he wanted to become a Jedi knight.

The Force was dulled in his mind, in his ears but he still felt it’s pull and it’s presence, so it didn’t matter. He learned how to adapt. He learned how to navigate the world half-blind.

The bracelet became part of him, it hung on his wrist when he was fourteen and it hung at his wrist when he was 25.

He could pretend this was normal. Anakin only questioned him once and his answer had been sharp. Too sharp. He did not want those heavy eyes. 

Not from the child who felt the Force in a way that Obi-wan could never, who wouldn’t be able to imagine being cut off from it for so long in the way he was. Anakin would give him those heavy eyes because, to him, this would be torture.

Obi-wan had wished, more than once, that Qui-gon had been the one to live.

How could he, blinded as he was, teach Anakin, who saw far more than anyone else? How could he help someone with something he couldn’t even fully understand?

He did it anyway, he had no choice.

He did not see the General again, he did not wake up screaming with blood on his hands and echoes of blaster-fire in his ears and the taste of burnt flesh on his tongue.

It wasn’t until Geonosis, when Dooku removed his bracelet and let it fall to the floor with a clang, the world shifted, splintered and collapsed.

He woke up, eyes stinging and face damp, the low buzz of whispers in his ears.

It wasn’t until days after Geonosis when he looked up into the mirror after fitting into his new armor, shiny white and unmarked that he saw him again.

He stared at his reflection and the General stared back, those hollow, blank eyes replaced with his own terrified grey-blue.

He’d promptly ran to the ‘fresher to vomit. Then he’d shed all of his armor and crawled back into bed.

Of course, the next morning he put on the armor again. This time, he avoided the mirror.

He’d looked out over the battalion he’d been assigned, a sea of identical white armor. 

Soldiers. Clones. Men. His men.

The memory of burning flesh was at the tip of his tongue the first time he was actually addressed as general and he counted it as a personal win that he didn’t retch.

It wasn’t any easier the second time or the third, or the fourth time someone looked him in the eye and said “ General” but at some point, it became normal.

Just like the blood on his hands from the men he was supposed to lead.

Just like the blaster-fire and the corpses and the explosions and the hunger and the exhaustion and the screams and the fear and-

He stopped looking in the mirror and he stopped meeting people’s eyes.

He didn’t want to see who he’d become.

He didn’t want to see the General anymore.

  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  



End file.
